Guruprasad Nagarajan's Blog - Posts Tagged "guruswriting"
My 15 minutes with Warhol.
As I went around the exhibition halls at the Mori Art Museum in the confusingly sprawling Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, featuring the creative output of the 15-minute man, I wondered where Andy Warhol would be without Campbell soup cans and screen-printing? Really. You take away those two from him, and it’s like taking away the cape and the weird-arm flying posture from Superman. They’re just not the same without their trademark symbols.
Most of his work featured Campbell cans and celebrity images souped up (ha!) with screen-printing technology. Apparently, he would copy a picture from a pop art magazine over and over using screen-printing, paste them on a canvas and put them up.
The exhibit had a section with his time capsules containing several of his everyday collections of things like magazines, doctor’s prescriptions, scrap papers and such.
The walls were printed with some of his sayings which were quite interesting. Here are a few:
“I never wanted to be a painter, I’ve always wanted to be a tap dancer instead.”
“I think everyone should be a machine”
“I had a job looking through fashion magazines in a department store at fifty cents an hour to look for ideas. I don’t ever remember finding one or getting one.”
“I used to work for these magazines, I thought I was being original and they wouldn’t want it, that’s’ when I stopped being imaginative.”
“My instinct says if I don’t think about it, it’s right. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it’s wrong.”
“I don’t think people die, they just go to department stores”.
And there were times when he was literally taking the piss. He used to urinate on canvas with a copper based paint and the resulting p(ee)aintings were sold as oxidation artworks. You should read the critics gushing about it. One compares it to the ancient art of alchemy and says Warhol alchemically was converting his own urine into art. It’s amazing what you can do when you have more than 15 minutes of fame and to what groveling lengths your critics would go to justify and rationalize everything that comes out of you. Literally.
That said, it was half a day well spent, although it left me wondering where he is now. Probably at a department store, you know, the aisle where the soup cans are?
Most of his work featured Campbell cans and celebrity images souped up (ha!) with screen-printing technology. Apparently, he would copy a picture from a pop art magazine over and over using screen-printing, paste them on a canvas and put them up.
The exhibit had a section with his time capsules containing several of his everyday collections of things like magazines, doctor’s prescriptions, scrap papers and such.
The walls were printed with some of his sayings which were quite interesting. Here are a few:
“I never wanted to be a painter, I’ve always wanted to be a tap dancer instead.”
“I think everyone should be a machine”
“I had a job looking through fashion magazines in a department store at fifty cents an hour to look for ideas. I don’t ever remember finding one or getting one.”
“I used to work for these magazines, I thought I was being original and they wouldn’t want it, that’s’ when I stopped being imaginative.”
“My instinct says if I don’t think about it, it’s right. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it’s wrong.”
“I don’t think people die, they just go to department stores”.
And there were times when he was literally taking the piss. He used to urinate on canvas with a copper based paint and the resulting p(ee)aintings were sold as oxidation artworks. You should read the critics gushing about it. One compares it to the ancient art of alchemy and says Warhol alchemically was converting his own urine into art. It’s amazing what you can do when you have more than 15 minutes of fame and to what groveling lengths your critics would go to justify and rationalize everything that comes out of you. Literally.
That said, it was half a day well spent, although it left me wondering where he is now. Probably at a department store, you know, the aisle where the soup cans are?
Pay with a tweet to download a sample of Ten Twisted Tales.
All right, let's see how this works. After trying facebook ads, Adwords and Bing and dabbling with Goodreads, I just started a Pay with a tweet campaign a couple of days ago. You can download a sample of my short story collection Ten Twisted Tales to get an idea of what the stories are about, the style of writing, etc, and should you be so (hopefully) inclined to purchase, you can do so on this site. There are five stories in the PDF. You can click the link (or copy paste it if it doesn't work for some reason): http://paywithatweet.com/pay?id=... Thank you.
Magical Realism dies at age 87
I almost always get drawn in by the first line of a book before buying it, and Marquez’ masterpiece was one such book I was lured into by the opening lines. There is something melancholic, beautiful, engaging, mysterious and irresistible about those first few lines. I had attempted reading him earlier, about ten years ago, but I landed on the wrong book, the Autumn of the Patriarch, which, if I remember right, did not have full stops for pages on end. All authors have their entry point books I think, (for instance, if you want to start off with Murakami don’t let Kafka on the Shore be your first as it was with me before I rediscovered him through Norwegian Woods)and luckily I revisited Marquez at Borders and got off to a wonderful journey that started with ten dollars. From then on I bought almost all his books and fell in love with his writing, even though he wrote in Spanish. That’s another inexplicable quality about his stories, you don’t feel like you are reading a translated piece of work, and the credit for that goes largely to Gregory Rabassa who erected a transparent (or diaphanous, as Marquez would have said) veil between the two languages to make sure you didn’t lose much in the process. And I learnt today that magical realism dies at age 87. RIP GGM. There will be one hundred years of platitude for your works, I'm sure.
Save the elephant
I'll spare you the gory and gruesome details of ivory trade and elephant poaching across the globe. Instead I'll introduce to Peaches and how she can help you help the cause.
Peaches is the baby elephant who plays the lead role in the Boogadooga Series of stories. She has two close friends, Alala the crow and Coco the monkey. Together they traipse through the magical Boogadooga jungle and learn useful life lessons that are relevant to kids these days. There are some other recurring characters in the series, like Basho the owl, the resident philosopher and problem solver who helps Peaches and her friends overcome whatever problems they are facing.
Peaches and her friends go to the Jungle Elementary School (the drawing teacher os is a toucan) where they learn what they feel like without the stress of competition. When they are free, which is most of the time, they go to the Jungle Juice Bar and have exotic fruits and fruit juices while exchanging tales of their wonderful lives in the forest.
'How does that help save the elephant?' you may ask.
Well, 50% of the sales of the Boogadooga Series goes to saving these beautiful creatures.
Currently there are two stories, The Lost Pencil where Peaches loses a pencil given to her by a girl, and The Expensive Brush where Coco learns the value of talent over tools. There are 10 stories in the series, which I will release over time.
I spoke to a prominent wildlife saving organisation about using their logo for my proposal. While they appreciated my effort they said they couldn't let me use their logo on my site unless the amount donated was $10,000.
Alternatively, they said they could send me a letter stating that I am donating half the proceeds to Save the Elephant project which I can post on the site to ease the doubting minds. I can get that letter after I send the donations from the first three months' sale.
If you would like to help save the elephant, please purchase the ebooks which are $2.99 each. You can buy them off Amazon, B&N and Kobo or my site. You'll find the details www.guruswriting.com Thank you.
Peaches is the baby elephant who plays the lead role in the Boogadooga Series of stories. She has two close friends, Alala the crow and Coco the monkey. Together they traipse through the magical Boogadooga jungle and learn useful life lessons that are relevant to kids these days. There are some other recurring characters in the series, like Basho the owl, the resident philosopher and problem solver who helps Peaches and her friends overcome whatever problems they are facing.
Peaches and her friends go to the Jungle Elementary School (the drawing teacher os is a toucan) where they learn what they feel like without the stress of competition. When they are free, which is most of the time, they go to the Jungle Juice Bar and have exotic fruits and fruit juices while exchanging tales of their wonderful lives in the forest.
'How does that help save the elephant?' you may ask.
Well, 50% of the sales of the Boogadooga Series goes to saving these beautiful creatures.
Currently there are two stories, The Lost Pencil where Peaches loses a pencil given to her by a girl, and The Expensive Brush where Coco learns the value of talent over tools. There are 10 stories in the series, which I will release over time.
I spoke to a prominent wildlife saving organisation about using their logo for my proposal. While they appreciated my effort they said they couldn't let me use their logo on my site unless the amount donated was $10,000.
Alternatively, they said they could send me a letter stating that I am donating half the proceeds to Save the Elephant project which I can post on the site to ease the doubting minds. I can get that letter after I send the donations from the first three months' sale.
If you would like to help save the elephant, please purchase the ebooks which are $2.99 each. You can buy them off Amazon, B&N and Kobo or my site. You'll find the details www.guruswriting.com Thank you.
Distilled wisdom
There is a marked difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge goes to TED talks and other platforms to play to the gallery while wisdom retires to the caves, knowing there is not much point in trying to impress an audience whose attention can be distracted by the next celebrity wardrobe malfunction.
And few things encapsulate wisdom more powerfully than proverbs. Besides being timeless and pithy, they contain the experience of centuries gone by in those few short, succinct words. Wisdom and brevity, kind of go together it seems (which reminds me of what Hegarty, an adman, said about long copy. His point was if the French Revolution needed only three words, Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite, why do you need a thousand word copy to sell a detergent powder?).
The curious thing about proverbs is that there are no bylines, no authorship, nothing. They are anonymous, accurate, and absolutely mind blowing.
First some extremely colourful and rich proverbs I grew up listening to:
1."Like a house of ill repute that has witnesses the birth of a boy"
When the light bulb reached its expiry end and was duller than a backbench student, our folks would say that (not within earshot of kids of course). I am not sure if any other expression comes close to convey the low wattage more accurately.
(In case you are wondering: Because the birth of a boy is no cause for celebration, hence dull lights.)
2."Brothels when able-bodied, the Lord on deathbed"
That's the rough translation. It means in the heady days of youth, power and virility, you waste it all on wanton pursuits, and cry for the lord when the effects of your playboy behaviour start to show in the twilight of your life.
3."Just because it's made of gold you can't prick your eyes with a golden pin"
Preciousness has its limitations.
4."Like getting pregnant out of politeness"
This applies to people are too nice and cannot say no even if the consequences are disastrous.
And few things encapsulate wisdom more powerfully than proverbs. Besides being timeless and pithy, they contain the experience of centuries gone by in those few short, succinct words. Wisdom and brevity, kind of go together it seems (which reminds me of what Hegarty, an adman, said about long copy. His point was if the French Revolution needed only three words, Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite, why do you need a thousand word copy to sell a detergent powder?).
The curious thing about proverbs is that there are no bylines, no authorship, nothing. They are anonymous, accurate, and absolutely mind blowing.
First some extremely colourful and rich proverbs I grew up listening to:
1."Like a house of ill repute that has witnesses the birth of a boy"
When the light bulb reached its expiry end and was duller than a backbench student, our folks would say that (not within earshot of kids of course). I am not sure if any other expression comes close to convey the low wattage more accurately.
(In case you are wondering: Because the birth of a boy is no cause for celebration, hence dull lights.)
2."Brothels when able-bodied, the Lord on deathbed"
That's the rough translation. It means in the heady days of youth, power and virility, you waste it all on wanton pursuits, and cry for the lord when the effects of your playboy behaviour start to show in the twilight of your life.
3."Just because it's made of gold you can't prick your eyes with a golden pin"
Preciousness has its limitations.
4."Like getting pregnant out of politeness"
This applies to people are too nice and cannot say no even if the consequences are disastrous.
Walls of wisdom
There’s something humble, selfless, magnanimous even, in graffiti messages, you know the good ones scrawled on bathroom stalls and big city walls? Because a lot of them border on the brilliant and some are just pure gold. Curiously, none of them (like the proverbs ) boast authorship. No bylines, no ‘these lines brought to you by’, nothing. They are anonymous, often accurate, and absolutely mind blowing.
There was a guy named Nigel Rees, if I remember right, who went around collecting graffiti messages and published them in a series of short books. I picked them up at the roadside bookstalls that used to flourish near the Fountain, Mumbai. Lost them, bit still some of the lines are etched in my mind. Like the ones below:
1."I used to be a schizophrenic, we are ok now"
2."The meek shall inherit the earth, if it's ok by you"
3."Amnesia rules, O... (in the series of ‘graffiti rules OK?’)
4."I'd give my right arm to be ambidexterous"
5."Misspellers of the world, untie"
6. "God is dead" - Nietzshe. "Nietzsche is dead" -God
7. "To do is to be" - Socrates. "To be is to do" -Sartre. "Do be do be do" - Sinatra.
8."I didn't believe in reincarnation the last time either"
9."Progress has gone too far"
10.Dyslexia lures, K.O
11."Is anal retentive hyphenated?"
12. "I am not obsessive, I am not obsessive, I am not obsessive ..."
There was a guy named Nigel Rees, if I remember right, who went around collecting graffiti messages and published them in a series of short books. I picked them up at the roadside bookstalls that used to flourish near the Fountain, Mumbai. Lost them, bit still some of the lines are etched in my mind. Like the ones below:
1."I used to be a schizophrenic, we are ok now"
2."The meek shall inherit the earth, if it's ok by you"
3."Amnesia rules, O... (in the series of ‘graffiti rules OK?’)
4."I'd give my right arm to be ambidexterous"
5."Misspellers of the world, untie"
6. "God is dead" - Nietzshe. "Nietzsche is dead" -God
7. "To do is to be" - Socrates. "To be is to do" -Sartre. "Do be do be do" - Sinatra.
8."I didn't believe in reincarnation the last time either"
9."Progress has gone too far"
10.Dyslexia lures, K.O
11."Is anal retentive hyphenated?"
12. "I am not obsessive, I am not obsessive, I am not obsessive ..."
